In December 1999, LSU hired Nick Saban away from Michigan State with a five-year contract at $1.2 million a year. The total package, not including perks and incentives, was $6 million.

In January 2007, Alabama hired Saban away from the NFL's Miami Dolphins with an eight-year contract at an average of $4 million a year.

Total package, minus the extras: $32 million.

Do the math, and it's obvious. Of all the changes in college football in the past decade, none may have been as radical as the major alterations in coaching contracts.

There's been creativity in incentives beyond such stand-bys as courtesy cars and country-club memberships. Saban's original Alabama deal, for example, included 25 hours of personal, non-business use of a private plane every year.

There's been a trickle-down effect to assistant coaches, too, who've gone from the standard year-to-year contract to multi-year deals for what used to be head coach money.

Saban's defensive coordinator at Alabama. Kirby Smart, received a raise this past off-season to $750,000 a year. That's more than Saban himself made in 1999 during his last season as the head coach at Michigan State.

"From the late '90s to now has seen enormous change," said Jimmy Sexton, the agent for both Saban and Smart. "I don't know how much more change you can have than what we've had."

But contracts, like coaches, don't often stand still.

Saban's deal has been redone after just three years - and one national title -- at Alabama. The big adjustment has been the addition of an escalator clause that guarantees Saban will remain among the highest-paid coaches in college football.

Beyond a continued inflation in compensation, what's likely to be The Next Big Thing in coaching contracts?

Russ Campbell, the Birmingham-based agent for Auburn coach Gene Chizik and Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino, suggested that the next trend may come, not from the coaches and their representatives, but from the schools themselves.

It's the non-compete clause. It's especially relevant in the SEC, where schools try to poach assistants and head coaches from each other.

"I am starting to see colleges attempt to get non-compete clauses within the conference or the region," Campbell said.

Petrino's Arkansas deal contains perhaps the most famous non-compete clause in the business. He's under contract with the Razorbacks through December 2014, but that contract contains a clause designed to prevent him from coaching at another SEC West school through 2012.

The clause says that Petrino "and/or any individual or entity acting on Coach's behalf shall not seek or accept employment in any coaching capacity with any other member institution of the Western Division of the SEC."

In 2003, some Auburn officials, including the school president, flew to meet with Petrino, then the Louisville coach, to discuss the Auburn job that belonged to Tommy Tuberville.

Campbell said non-compete clauses "are trickling down into assistant coach's contracts." One of his clients, Neal Brown, who is Tuberville's offensive coordinator at Texas Tech, has a clause designed to keep him from leaving Tech for another school in the Big 12.

"The enforceability of (such clauses) is in question," Campbell said. "It depends on whether the clause is reasonable."

In addition to Saban and Tuberville, Sexton also represents South Carolina's Steve Spurrier, Mississippi's Houston Nutt and Tennessee's Derek Dooley. In the past five years, those five clients have had 10 different head coaching jobs among them.

Sexton can see that kind of movement slowing in coming years.

"I think the value of a coach in college is extremely important to a program," Sexton said. "I think you're going to see it be harder and harder for schools that have openings to hire sitting head coaches.

"Either contractually, the coaches are locked up or the schools are going to fight to keep them."